Region
Apulia
Apulia's 59 towns in our catalogue split across the Lecce, Foggia, and Bari provinces; 23 carry the Borghi Autentici designation.
59 towns · highest: Monte Sant'Angelo 843m · smallest: Celle di San Vito 148 people
59 of 59 towns
59 of 59 towns
Acquaviva delle Fonti
Province: Bari
A Murge town at 300 meters between Bari and the Itria valley, named for its springs and a DOP red onion.
Alberobello
Province: Bari
The Itria valley town built entirely of trulli, 1,500 corbelled limestone cones in two quarters, UNESCO since 1996.
Andria
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani
Frederick II's favourite Apulian city, the birthplace of burrata, with the octagonal Castel del Monte rising 540 meters above the Murge eighteen kilometers south.
Biccari
Province: Foggia
A Subappennino Dauno borgo at 450 meters under Monte Cornacchia, the highest peak in Puglia at 1,151 meters, with a Byzantine tower at its core.
Bisceglie
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani
An Adriatic port town between Trani and Molfetta, named for Roman watchtowers, with five dolmens around it and a Norman cathedral begun in 1073.
Bovino
Province: Foggia
A Daunian Mountains hill town at 646 meters above the Cervaro valley, Roman Vibinum, with a Norman-Swabian castle later turned into a Guevara ducal palace.
Campi Salentina
Province: Lecce
A Salento plain town fifteen kilometers north of Lecce, founded after the Saracen raids of 926, with a Frederician castle that became a Paladini-Enriquez marquisate.
Carovigno
Province: Brindisi
An upper Salento town between Brindisi and Ostuni, built on the Messapian Carbina destroyed in 473 BC, with the Torre Guaceto marine reserve offshore.
Casamassima
Province: Bari
The blue town of the Murge, twenty kilometers south of Bari, its centro storico painted with copper-blue lime after the 1658 plague spared its residents.
Cassano delle Murge
Province: Bari
A Murge foothills town at 341 meters at the gate of the Alta Murgia park, with the 1,300-hectare Foresta Mercadante mostly inside its territory.
Castellana Grotte
Province: Bari
A Murge town at 290 meters above the karst cave system discovered in 1938, with a 3-kilometer subterranean route 60 meters deep.
Castellaneta
Province: Taranto
A cliff-edge Murge town at 235 meters above the Gravina Grande canyon, birthplace of Rudolph Valentino in 1895, with a Bandiera Blu Ionian marina.
Celle di San Vito
Province: Foggia
The smallest commune in Puglia, 148 residents at 726 meters in the Monti Dauni, one of two Franco-Provençal-speaking villages in the south.
Cisternino
Province: Brindisi
An Itria valley borgo on the southern Murgia at 394 meters, whitewashed, Cittaslow since 2003 and Cittaslow City of the Year in 2014.
Conversano
Province: Bari
A pre-Murge hill town at 219 meters, three centuries seat of the Acquaviva counts, with the abbey-monastery once called the Wonder of Puglia.
Copertino
Province: Lecce
A Salento town fifteen kilometers west of Lecce, with one of Puglia's largest Renaissance fortresses and the birthplace of Saint Joseph of Copertino.
Corigliano d'Otranto
Province: Lecce
A Grecìa Salentina town twenty-five kilometers south of Lecce, Griko-speaking, with a 1500s Lecce-stone castle of circular towers around a quadrangular plan.
Faeto
Province: Foggia
The highest village in Puglia at 820 meters, Franco-Provençal-speaking since 1266, on a Monti Dauni ridge below Monte Cornacchia.
Fasano
Province: Brindisi
A Brindisi-province town from the Adriatic up to the Itria escarpment, holding the Roman ruins of Egnazia, the Selva, and Europe's second-largest safari park.
Galatina
Province: Lecce
The Salento town at 78 meters where the cult of San Paolo bred tarantism and gave the pizzica its origin myth.
Galatone
Province: Lecce
A Salento town at 57 meters thirteen kilometers from Gallipoli, built around a Baroque sanctuary raised over a fourteenth-century Byzantine icon.
Gallipoli
Province: Lecce
The Ionian beach city on a limestone island, Greek Kallipolis meaning beautiful city, tied to the mainland by a seventeenth-century bridge.
Giovinazzo
Province: Bari
An Adriatic fishing port twenty kilometers northwest of Bari, with a Norman cathedral and a Bronze Age dolmen in the agro inland.
Giurdignano
Province: Lecce
A two-thousand-resident Salento borgo at 78 meters known as the megalithic garden of Italy, with nineteen menhirs and a cluster of dolmens.
Gravina in Puglia
Province: Bari
Puglia's deepest gravina — a 42,700-resident Bari-province town built on the lip of a 100m-deep limestone canyon, with the 18th-c Ponte Acquedotto walkway across the gorge that James Bond crossed in No Time to Die, a network of rupestrian cave churches in the cliff face, and the four-signal BPB + Cittaslow + Via Francigena + Parco Nazionale combination.
Isole Tremiti
Province: Foggia
An Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.
Lecce
Province: Lecce
The Baroque capital of the Salento, ninety-four thousand people on the Lecce-stone plain, carving its façades in honey limestone since 1500.
Locorotondo
Province: Bari
The round white town on the Itria valley ridge at 410 meters, with cummerse roofs the rest of Puglia does not have.
Manduria
Province: Taranto
The Messapian capital thirty-five kilometers east of Taranto, ringed by three concentric stone walls and the home of Primitivo.
Martano
Province: Lecce
The biggest town in the Grecìa Salentina, twenty kilometers south of Lecce, where the Griko language still survives among older residents.
Martina Franca
Province: Taranto
Puglia's second Baroque city after Lecce, on the Itria ridge at 431 meters, with an opera festival in its ducal courtyard since 1975.
Maruggio
Province: Taranto
Salento's Knights of Malta borgo — a fortified Borgo più Bello on a low Ionian hill with 11 km of Bandiera Blu coast at Campomarino, Negroamaro and Primitivo vines pressing into the centro, and a unique commanderie history that made it the Order's southern Italian headquarters for 600 years.
Mattinata
Province: Foggia
The only Apulian town that faces south on the Adriatic, the white amphitheater of the eastern Gargano with the Zagare sea stacks below.
Melendugno
Province: Lecce
Salento's archaeological-beach capital — a 10,000-resident Lecce-province comune covering 17 km of Adriatic coast with three Bandiera Blu beaches (Torre dell'Orso, San Foca, Sant'Andrea), the Grotta della Poesia karst pool (one of the world's most beautiful natural pools per National Geographic), and the Bronze-Age-to-Messapian-to-medieval Roca Vecchia archaeological site.
Minervino Murge
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani
The Balcone di Puglia at 445 meters on the Alta Murgia, between the Ofanto valley and Monte Vulture, inside the national park.
Monopoli
Province: Bari
An Adriatic walled town forty kilometers south of Bari, the Charles V castle on the headland, 156 square kilometers of coastline behind it.
Monte Sant'Angelo
Province: Foggia
The Gargano peak at 843 meters where the Archangel Michael appeared in 490, the oldest western shrine to him, UNESCO since 2011.
Nardò
Province: Lecce
The second city of Salento after Lecce, a Baroque inland capital twenty-five kilometers from Lecce with a Ionian coastline behind it.
Nociglia
Province: Lecce
A small Salento interior village forty kilometers south of Lecce, a fourteenth-century baronial castle and a Bosco Belvedere that gave the place its name.
Oria
Province: Brindisi
A Messapian acropolis between Taranto and Brindisi crowned by Frederick II's triangular castle, home to one of medieval Europe's oldest Jewish communities.
Ostuni
Province: Brindisi
The Città Bianca on three hills at 218 meters, eight kilometers inland, whitewashed against the Murge above an Adriatic plain of olive trees.
Otranto
Province: Lecce
Italy's easternmost city, eighty kilometers from Albania, with a Norman mosaic floor and the bones of 813 martyrs in the cathedral.
Peschici
Province: Foggia
A Gargano cliff-top village above the Adriatic with a Norman castle of 1023, white houses spilling toward the sea and trabucchi on the headlands.
Pietramontecorvino
Province: Foggia
A Subappennino Dauno village at 456 meters on a tufa spur with a 30-meter Norman-Angevin tower and houses carved into the rock.
Poggiorsini
Province: Bari
The smallest commune in metropolitan Bari, an Orsini estate of 1609 that became an independent town only in 1957.
Polignano a Mare
Province: Bari
The Adriatic cliff town thirty kilometers south of Bari, built on a twenty-metre limestone bluff, birthplace of Domenico Modugno.
Putignano
Province: Bari
Europe's longest-running carnival — Putignano Carnevale has run continuously since 1394, with 631 years of cartapesta papier-mâché floats, a 26,000-resident Murgia town on the Bari–Lecce plateau, and the Grotta del Trullo karst cave inside the centro.
Rodi Garganico
Province: Foggia
A Gargano promontory town above the Adriatic, citrus capital of the peninsula, with DOP oranges and lemons grown since the Middle Ages.
Roseto Valfortore
Province: Foggia
A Daunian Mountain stone village at 658 meters near the Fortore springs, named for the wild roses and known for black and white truffles.
Sammichele di Bari
Province: Bari
A Murge town at 280 meters founded in 1609, anchored by the Caracciolo castle and famous for the zampina pork sausage.
San Giovanni Rotondo
Province: Foggia
The Gargano town where Padre Pio lived for fifty-two years, second-largest pilgrimage site in Italy, with a Renzo Piano sanctuary that seats 6,500.
San Severo
Province: Foggia
The Daunia wine capital on the Tavoliere, home to Puglia's first DOC of 1968 and a Carnevale of fanoia explosions known across the south.
Specchia
Province: Lecce
A medieval Salento borgo on the Serra Magnone at 130 meters, named for the Messapian stone lookouts that once watched the coast.
Trani
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani
The Adriatic port whose pink-white Romanesque cathedral stands on the water, built for a Greek pilgrim who died here in 1094.
Trinitapoli
Province: Barletta-Andria-Trani
A Tavoliere town between the Saline di Margherita and the Ofanto, sitting on a Bronze Age sanctuary that still surprises archaeologists.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Vernole
Province: Lecce
A Salento commune ten kilometers from Lecce whose frazione of Acaya is the only Renaissance fortified town in southern Italy.
Vico del Gargano
Province: Foggia
A Gargano hill town at 445 meters with a Norman castle, a kiss alley, and DOP citrus groves stepping down to the Adriatic.
Vieste
Province: Foggia
The Gargano headland of whitewashed alleys on a white limestone cliff, with the Pizzomunno sea stack standing 26 meters offshore.
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An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.